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ENGLi^ND 



HEK 



PRESENT CONDITION AND FUTURE PROSPECTS 



AS ONE OP THE 



irtat lofeers of l|e (Eart^. 



A LECTURE DELIVERED BEFORE THE ATHENEUM, COLUMBUS, 
MARCH 6, 1856. 



HON. THOMAS EWING, 




Y 
CINCINNATI: 

E. W. CARROLL & CO., PUBLISHERS, 117 W. FOURTH STREET. 



1866. 



CORRESPONDENCE. 



Atheneum Eooms, 

Columbus, 0., March 8, 1856. 
Hon. Thomas Swing: 

Dear Sir .-—Wishing to gratify a rery general desire on the part of the public, we respect- 
fully solicit for publication a copy of your able and interesting Lecture on England, delivered 
before this Association on the 6tb inst. 

Sincerely hoping that you will consent, 

We remain very respectfully, 

J. J. JANNET, 
WM. E. IDE, 
H. C. NOBLE, 
A. B. BUTTLES, 
JOS. HDTCHESON, 

Directors. 



Cincinnati, March 12, 1856. 
Gentlemen : 

I have yonr favor of the 8th inst., requesting a copy of the Lecture delivered by me on 
the evening of tlie 6th, for publication. I send you a copy, which you are at liberty to pub- 
lish, and am A'ery respectfully yours, 

w T T T T. EWIN6. 

Messrs. John J. .Tannet, 

Wm. E. Ide, 

H. C. Noble, 

A. B. Buttles, 

Joseph Huicheson, 

Directors. 



LECTURE 



Ladies and Gentlemen : 

We are so much in the habit of speaking and writing 
about ourselves — of looking back to our recent feeble origin, 
wondering at our rapid growth and present power, and in- 
dulging in visions of a mighty future which we have learned 
to claim as ours by manifest destiny — that we hardly think 
of the world abroad, (except such parts of it as we intend 
to annex,) or reason about the condition of other nations. 
But other nations there are more mighty than we, who now 
divide the Empire of the Earth among themselves and with 
us, and who are destined to divide it for ages with our pos- 
terity. Among these, the nation in which we have the 
deepest interest — the object most of our emulation and 
rivalry^ is Great Britain : and I purpose to spend the allot- 
ted hour this evening in presenting to you some views of 
her present condition and future prospects as one of the 
great ruling posvers of the Earth. 

The Island of Great Britain, which is the nucleus of the 
vast British Empire, and which alone of all that pertains to 
it has unity, is small in extent — about equal to Pennsylva- 
nia and Ohio. If we cast off from the estimate the barren 
and almost uninhabited Highlands of Scotland, the whole 
remaining territory of the Island is not equal to that of the 
State of Missouri. But its population is immense — averag- 
ing more than 300 to the square mile. It is greater, per- 
haps, than was ever fixed upon an equal extent of territory 



6 ENGLAND : HER PRESENT CONDITION 

■ on the face of the Earth. In the present age it is certainly 
unequaled. Belgium, a small spot of garden earth, rich 
mines, and manufacturing cities, has, it is true, a larger 
population to the sqiaare mile than all of England, including 
moor and mountain, but this forms no just comparison, 
liindostan has not more than one hundred and seventy to 
the square mile, and China proper much less than three 
hundred. It is obvious, therefore, that the Island of Great 
Britain, blessed with no extraordinary fertility, can not sup- 
port its population from its own agricultural products : and 
we know in fact that it does not. Its people subsist, part- 
ly on the products of their own soil, which is made to yield 
its utmost : while the amount which they receive from for- 
eign countries is very large. In grain and flour alone it 
was equal to 94,000,000 bushels of wheat in the year end- 
ing July 1, 1854 ; with other agricultural products in due 
proportion. 

The wealth which purchases this vast amount of the 
necessaries of life is derived partly from conquered coun- 
tries in Asia ; and partly from numerous work-shops at 
home, where fuel dug from the earth performs, day by day, 
and year by year, the labor of many millions of men. 
liindostan, the most fertile, and formerly the richest portion 
of Asia, is a tributary ; and Great Britain draws from it, 
through her East India Company, all the products of its 
soil and labor, except what is necessary in ordinary fruitful 
years to sustain its population — leaving no means in the land 
to buy bread in years of famine. The wealth of that coun- 
try, which had been treasured up for ages by the prudence, 
the avarice, or the vanity of native princes, was plundered , 
at the time of the conquest, by Clive and Hastings; and 
nothing has been since permitted to accumulate there. The 
whole surplus product of that vast and - fertile region has 



AND FUTURE PROSPECTS. 



gone to augment the wealth and support the population of 
Great Britain. A single article of export — opium — first 
smuggled into China "by the servants of the East India 
Company, and at last in the name of free trade, forced into 
her markets at the cannon's mouth, produces an annual 
revenue of more than thirty-five millions of dollars. 

But it is like Tyre of old, "by the multitude of her 
wares," that Great Britain makes the world her tributary. 
It is difficult to find a nation or people, great or small, sav- 
age or civilized, that does not furnish something of the pro- 
ducts of the earth in exchange for the product of her en- 
gines. Bonaparte said she conquered him with her spin- 
dles : and it was indeed vain for even him to resist them. 
If he were the Man of Destiny, the Steam Engine was one 
of its Powers — quite too mighty for the man. But when 
these spindles conquered the conqueror of Europe, they had 
acquired not half their present potency. Their increase 
has since been very great, and more than ever within the 
last ten years ; and with them have increased the wealth 
and prosperity of the nation. 

Great Britain, as a power, is essentially maritime. Her 
navy, in warlike appointment, exceeds that of any other 
nation on the face of ^he earth — and for nearly two hund- 
red years, until within the present century, she has not 
met her match on lake or ocean, gun to gun -and man to 
man — and certainly not yet among the nations of Europe- 
She has consequently rested for ages secure from the de- 
vastations of war. Since the Norman invasion no hostile 
foreign force has found footing on her shores. The jutting 
clift* which she presents as her nearest point to Europe, 

" That pale and white-faced shore, 
Whose foot spurns back the raging ocean's tides." 

is typical of the defensive power of this Island people. But 



8 ENGLAND : HER PEESENT CONDITION 



her power, beyond her own rock-bound coast, is on the sea 
alone : 

" Her marcli is on the mountain wave, 
Her liome is on the deep ;" 

and though there, on her own proper element, she is all- 
powerful, yet on land, in the wars of Europe, she has, ex- 
cept in two memorable instances, acted but a secondary part. 
Her merchant and coasting ships employ great numbers of 
sailors, and out of these she supplies abundantly her navy 
with men whose lives have been on the ocean, and who know 
no home but the deck. She never lacks sailors. 

But she can not raise land armies. She has not within 
the last four hundred years raised a considerable English 
army for the continental wars, and is much less able now 
than an hundred years ago. Macaulay very truly says, 
"both the industry and idleness of great towns generate a 
repugnance to military pursuits." True to the principle, 
her great towns furnish few soldiers ; her miners and manu- 
facturers, who Hve and work under shelter, are not fit for 
service in the open field, and her agricultural laborers have 
no taste for military adventure, fehakspeare, with his in- 
stinctive appreciation of character, gives, in the second part 
of his King Henry IV, a just measure of the military pre- 
dilection of the English boor. His Mouldy and Bull Calf 
may be fairly taken, then and at the present time, as repre- 
sentatives of the class to which they belong. When drafted 
as suldiers, one begs to be released, for if he go, " hi^ old 
dame will be undone for some one to do her husbandry and 
her drudgery ;" and the other " would as hef be hanged as 
to go." And at no time, down to the present day, has the 
British peasant panted for the tented field, or been eager to 
advance to " the imminent deadly breach." He has always 
preferred, and still prefers, his old dame's '' husbandry and 



AND FUTURE PEOSPECTS. 9 

drudgery," with the home comforts of the English cottage, 
to the laurels to be won, and the Hmbs to be lost, at Water- 
loo or Sebastopol. For his " own part he would as lief be 
hanged as to go." 

Ireland has supplied much the larger contingent of sol- 
diers for the British service. Her sons have been starved 
into the ranks of the army ; and there is more truth than 
poetry in the doggerel triplet of Daniel O'Connell : 

"At famous Waterloo, 
Duke Wellington would have looked blue, 
If Paddy had not been there too." 

But Irishmen, though fond of war, have no love for the 
British service. They enter it only from necessity, and 
since two of her eight millions have perished by the recent 
famine, and since the natural increase has been kept down 
by emigration, the ranks of the army can no longer be 
filled in Ireland. Great Britain, therefore, can not raise an 
army for continental service, but has been compelled to 
resort to the employment of foreign troops, and to enlist- 
ments in foreign countries. Her necessities drove her to 
try even ours; and with all her boundless wealth, and with 
the spindles which conquered Bonaparte quadrupled, she is 
able to bear but an inferior part in the present conflict of 
mighty nations. In this desperate struggle, wherein she 
has much at stake, she tries, bat with imperfect success, to 
keep in the field a contingent of 50,000 men ; while Austria, 
which barely ranks as a first rate power, had ready for the 
field, on the first approach of danger, a well-appointed army 
of 450,000. It is evident, therefore, that Great Britain, 
powerful as she is on the ocean, is comparatively feeble 
every-where ofi' her own soil, and out of the range of the 
guns of her men-of-war. "Her home is on the deep." 
There, too, was the home of her predecessors, Tyre, and 



10 ENGLAND: HER PRESENT CONDITION 



Carthage, and Venice. Like them in the days of their 
prosperity, she has foreign possessions quite disproportioned 
to the power of her own people ; and hke them, she must 
trust to foreign mercenaries to defend those possessions, and 
to hold them in subjection. 

Besides her inability to raise men, her military arm is 
paralyzed by a vice inherent in her system. Her armies 
are not well officered. Commissions, up to a certain grade, 
are the subject of purchase and sale, not the reward of merit. 
By this the morale of the army suffers, and that, too, even 
to the highest in command ; for the General-in-Chief him- 
self, if he have military experience, must be selected from 
those who have bought their way, instead of those who 
have fought their way, to high military rank. Her soldiers 
are as brave as any on the face of the earth ; but all who 
have attended to the details of the war in the Crimea, must 
have felt the great superiority of the French over the Eng- 
lish organization and command. The French commissariat 
has from the first been better ; their medical staff better ; 
their corps of engineers better; and fewer mistakes have 
been committed by their officers. All this is perceived and 
felt, and the proud spirit of the British nation is wounded, 
and revolts at the contrast; and the ministry. is censured 
for what is inherent in the system, and not under their 
control. Great Britain had, in times past, a Marlborough 
and a Wellington, but there was a century between them, 
and those great commanders are but exceptions : they were 
great in spite of the vices of the system under which they 
rose. Her military power is now less than it was fifty 
years ago, during the wars consequent on the French Rev- 
olution ; though within that time she has more than 
doubled her population, and trebled her manufactures and 
commerce. 



AND FUTUEE PROSPECTS. 11 

There are yet two elements which deserve notice in esti- 
mating the national status of Great Britain — both unknown 
to ancient times, and both derived from the free States of 
Italy. Her bank, which she borrowed from Venice, her 
immediate predecessor as the world's great center of capital 
and credit : her public debt, which she learned from Flor- 
ence to fund, and thus convert into a species of currency. 
The public debt, to which the Bank is but subordinate and 
ancillary, is of great importance for its present, and also for 
its probable future influence on the wealth and prosperity of 
the nation. It has all accumulated in about one hundred 
and seventy years, and amounts at this time to £800,000,- 
000 sterling, equal to about four thousand millions of dol- 
lars — an enormous sum, of which we can hardly have a 
comprehension. It strikes the mind like numbers which 
represent sidereal distances — immensity in space. That 
this enormous debt will never be paid, is certain — indeed[, 
no one can for a moment suppose that it will ever be con- 
siderably reduced in amount, unless the Government shall 
in some extremity expunge it. Subject to this contingency, 
which can hardly occur, except under extraordinary finan- 
cial pressure, it will continue as long as Great Britain con- 
tinues to be a nation; and it will increase as long as she 
maintains her present eminence in wealth and power; and 
the interest will be punctually paid as long as she can raise 
by taxation or borrow money to pay it. Que hundred and 
thirteen years ago, David Hume considered the public debt 
in one of his celebrated essays. It then amounted to about 
£100,000,000 sterhng. He came to the conclusion that it 
could never be paid, and he discussed the question whether, 
as a matter of policy merely, the deb., should continue to be 
acknowledged and the interest paid, or the whole at once 
expunged. And he decided in favor of what we call repudi- 



12 ENGLAND: HER PRESENT CONDITION 

ation, because, as he suggests, a rich rogue will have better 
credit than an honest bankrupt. The debt, during that 
century, troubled the British statesmen greatly, as well as 
the people whose property was incumbered with it. This 
uneasy feeling, and an efTort to make the American Colonies 
pay a part of it, gave rise to the war of our Revolution ; 
which, as one of its smallest consequences, doubled the debt. 

This debt has, in a Httle more than one hundred years, a 
short period in the life of a nation, arisen to £800,000,. 00 
sterling ; and it has become in the hands of its holders an 
enormous capital, more available in all the business opera- 
tions of life than an equal amount of gold and silver. It 
is money which brings interest while it passes from hand to 
hand or lies in the merchant's or manufacturer's chest. 
Small as is the rate of interest, if punctually paid and con- 
stantly re-invested, the three per cents, will, in one hundred 
years, produce sixteen-fold. This quality of accumulation 
by compound interest in long periods of time, suggested the 
idea of paying off the public debt by a sinking fund, which 
failed because the fund was continually borrowed, or money 
was elsewhere borrowed to supply its place, which more than 
sunk the fund. Thus the public debt has been suffered to 
accumulate, and it has been made available in the hands of 
individuals to build up fortunes great and small, and, upon 
a general view, seems to add to the wealth of the nation, or 
rather of the people. This is fallacious. The debt is owned 
in Great Britain, and it is owed by 'Great Britain. All the 
people and property of the Island owe to a portion of the 
people ^1,000.000,000, on which they pay, or seem to pay, 
an annual interest of |140,000,000. 

These are the leading elements which, with the compara- 
tive freedom of her Government, the energy and enterprise 
of her people, and the absolute security of life and property, 



AND FUTURE PROSPECTS. 13 

(and nowhere are life and property better protected,) make 
up the present status of Great Britain, and by and subject 
to which she holds her elevation and power. Great individ- 
ual wealth has followed as a consequence of her unrivalled 
national prosperity. Lord Bacon says, "Let States. that 
aim at greatness take heed how their nobility and gentry 
multiply too fast." But Great Britain could not take heed, 
and her great wealth has multiplied her. nobility and gentry 
until they bear a proportion to the whole population quite 
unequaled within the range of history; not even excepting 
Spain, when the precious metals of Mexico and Peru flowed 
over, and enriched and ruined her. This aristocracy of 
wealth, disconnected with and independent of the landed 
aristocracy, is supported by the annual interest upon the 
public debt ; by the vast sums yearly drawn from subju- 
gated India ; by the rack rents of Ireland, and the profits 
on manufactures and commerce; while they, the nobility 
and gentry, with the multitude of their dependents and 
those who minister to their wants, add nothing t) the 
productive industry which sustains them. They are a bur- 
den, and at this day almost a crushing burden, upon that 
industry. Such now is Great Britain. 

There seems to be an impression upon the minds of men 
that there is a necessary period to the lives of nations, and 
that each, however mighty it may be, must fall at last be- 
fore the general leveler, Time, and give place to younger 
and more vigorous creations — as the giant oak, which has 
towered above the forest and stood the storms of a thousand 
years, can not yet stand in its majesty and strength forever : 
Time passes by, it feels his touch, and perishes ; and the 
young sapling which sprung up at its root rises above and 
overshadows it. It may indeed be so with nations ; it may 
be that each and all the elements which give growth, and 



14 ENGLAND : HER PRESENT CONDITION 

wealth, and power may contain also in themselves, and 
necessarily bring with them, the ultimate causes of national 
decay. But if it be so, when will they reach their full and 
final development? How many are the years allotted to 
the lives of nations ? 

An oracle, it is said, warned the Etruscans that their 
State would be destroyed ten ages after the date of its 
foundation. That is to say, taking the survivor of all who 
were living on the day of the foundation of the State, and 
counting to the day of his death for one age, and then to 
the day of the death of the survivor of all who were alive 
at the end of the first age, for the second ; and so on until 
the ten ages should be completed — which brought them 
down, as Niebuhr tells us, eleven hundred years, to the time 
of the actual destruction of their State in the conquest of 
Veii by Rome. And he gives a like period to Rome, reck- 
oning from the foundation of the city to the time when the 
Empire was overrun and partitioned among the barbarous 
hordes of the north. This is mythical. But youth, and 
manhood, and age are properly predicated of nations as well 
as of men. It seems to be felt that there is to them also a 
necessary period, often hastened by rash imprudence or 
overwhelming external violence, but often due to the natural 
development of the causes which give rise to their greatness 
and power. Lord Bacon, in his Vicissitudes of Things, 
says : " In the youth of a State arms do flourish ; in the 
middle age of a State learning, and then both together for 
some time ; in the dechning age of a State mechanic arts 
and merchandize." We find now in England a different 
arrangement of the elements indicating national maturity — 
learning, mechanic arts, and merchandize now all flourish 
together there. 

As it falls in with my train of thought, I may be excused 



AND FUTUEE PROSPECTS- 15 

for turning aside a moment to notice the recent vigorous 
manhood of the Turkish Empire, which Montaigne, the 
pleasant essayist almost of our own times, speaks of as the 
most powerful and warlike among the nations. The Turkish 
cities were once indeed the emporia of commerce and the 
marts of wealth. The Turkey merchant was the merchant, 
par excellence, of our ancestors. All that was most rich 
and rare, whether the product of nature or of art, if it came 
from abroad by sea, was from Turkey. Even the fine bird 
of our North American forest, when carried into England, 
was a Turkey — because it came from beyond the sea, and 
because of its size and excellence. But three hundred 
years have passed by, and that prond empire has fallen 
It is sick, though not quite dead. Its riches have taken to 
themselves wings and flown away. Its arts have perished. 
It -is the dying man — and his funeral obsequies are even 
now celebrated in advance by the waving of western flags 
on both sides of the Bosphorus, and by the roar of cannon 
on the shores of the Euxine. 

Great Britain, though in at the death, is not, I think, 
destined to inherit any portion of the estate of the dying 
man ; indeed, his lands would burden, not enrich her. The 
control of the Bosphorus and the Euxine could add nothing 
to her strength and security, unless it would enable her to 
check the advance of Russia south and east of the Caspian. 
Indeed, there is nothing left within her reach, anywhere, 
which Great Britain can safely and profitably conquer. 
Like Rome in the reign of the Emperor Trajan, it were now 
her policy to restrict rather than to extend her dominions. 

Her star has reached its culminating point It is not 
probable that she will attain a higher comparative elevation. 
On the contrary, changes which are now in apparent progress, 
must tend to depress rather than exalt her in the scale of 



36 ENGLAND: HEE PRESENT CONDITION 

nations. The first and most obvious of these is the vast 
increase in population and power of two nations, Russia and 
the United States, which have but lately risen to such rank 
that she begins to recognize them as rivals. The popula- 
tion of the United States already exceeds that of the Island 
of Great Britain, and is increasing in such a ratio that it 
doubles every twenty-five years, or four times in a century. 
So that, should the present rate of increase continue for the 
next fifty years, the population of the United States at the 
end of that period, quite within the natural life of many 
who hear me, will exceed one huadred millions ; and in all 
else that gives power to a nation, she increases in an equal 
ratio — while Great Britain, if she suffer no decadence, can 
no more than remain stationary. The two countries are 
now merely commercial rivals, and it is difficult to anticipate 
any reasonable erase of hostile collision between them. 
Trifling controversies have arisen, and may arise, but it is 
the obvious policy of Great Britain to cultivate friendly 
relations with the United States; and she has no important 
interest at all within our power which it is for our interest 
to disturb. We may desire a share in the commerce of 
India, but we can not compel her to yield it ; we may over- 
grow and surpass her, but it does not seem probable that 
ours is the nation destined to shake her empire. Of us, 
indeed, she has no such fears — but the case is different as 
to Russia. Great Britain looks upon her even now with 
apprehension and alarm ; and she has formed a close alli- 
ance with her own hereditary enemy, and they have directed 
their united arms against Russia, and as near as might be, 
against that part of her dominions whence Great Britain 
has cause to apprehend immediate danger— danger to her 
most important and cherished possessions, the empire of her 
merchant princes in India. 



AND FUTURE PROSPECTS. 17 

India was conquered by Great Britain, like Mexico and 
Peru by Spain, with a force quite insignificant when com- 
pared with the extent and population of the subjugated 
country. The natives are a feeble and timid race, unfit to 
oppose Europeans in arms ; and their numbers, when assailed 
by British troops, availed no more than the number in a 
herd of bullocks when attacked by tigers. Hence, that 
fine country was conquered and plundered, and has been 
held in subjection for about eighty years, by a company of 
merchants, aided by a very small band of military adven- 
turers. The political morality of this invasion and conquest 
no one pretends to justify. Its merits were truly presented 
on the trial of Warren Hastings. Had the incidents which 
go to make up its histor}^ occurred on lands washed by 
Western seas, they would have been written down buccan- 
eering and piracy. Her claim to India, therefore, has none 
of the respect among men which is due to peaceful, legiti- 
mate dominion. It is the title of the robber to his booty, 
and no one cares how soon it is rent from him. 

The conquest was effected by the usual expedient of con- 
querors. The invaders allied themselves with one of two 
contending factions in a State, and by their skill and valor 
subjugated both. They made soldiers of the conquered 
natives, and, by giving them British officers, and arms, and 
discipline, made of them conquering armies. But they are 
efficient only against the feeble and unwarlike race to which 
they belong. They would be worthless before a European 
army, or an army of Afghans or Tartars with European 
allies, led on by European officers, and fighting with Euro- 
pean arms. Besides, India is full of discontent, brought on 
by the most grinding oppression. The means even now 
resorted to by the servants of the East India Company to 
compel the payment of their annual assessments and the 
2 



18 EKGLAT^D: HEE PEESENT CONDITIOI^ 

disclosure of hidden treasure, is the same used by the rob- 
ber Barons of the middle ages to extort money from the 
Jews — the thumb-screw and the cautery. This is affirmed 
by the report of a commission under the authority of Par- 
liament within the past year. And it is to this weak, plun- 
dered, oppressed, and disaffected people that Great Britain 
trusts, and must trust, the defense of her Indian empire. If 
it were positively known that she must lose India, or send 
an army of j&fty thousand Englishmen to defend it, she 
could not, with all her resources, raise the men. She could 
recruit officers, but not men. Her common people, besides 
their dislike of a soldier's life, have a horror of the bilious, 
enervating climate of India ; and if an army of English- 
men were requisite to save her Indian empire, that empire 
must fall. The history of the world does not furnish an 
example of such rich and extensive dominion held by such 
eeble grasp. 

Such is the condition of British India as a defensive 
power. It remains for me to show something of the dan- 
gers which threaten it ; and I beg you wiU not for a moment 
think this an unimportant branch of my subject. British 
India has an extent equal to six Idngdoms like France, or 
thirteen islands like Great Britain. It extends from the 
snow-clad liimmalaya to the sun-parched Deccan, embrac- 
ing climates which, though fatal to Europeans, are yet genial 
to the natives : and of the 200,000,000 souls which the 
British empire numbers, more than 150,000,000, full three- 
fourths of the whole, are East Indians. They are an abste- 
mious, industrious people, well skilled in the arts, and for 
the last three thousand years their commerce has. enriched 
the nations and cities which have enjoyed it. The loss of 
its monopoly would at once sink Great Britain to a second 
rank as a maritime power. It would crush, at a single 



AND FUTURE PEOSPECTS. 19 

blow, half her commerce and half her navy. You will not 
wonder, then, that she is guarding it with jealous care, nor 
that a rival nation should anxiously wait the favorable mo- 
ment to wrest it from her grasp. Permit me to show, in 
some detail, the dangers with which it is threatened, and the 
precautions which she is taking for its defense. 

India has been often conquered. Five times within the 
period of authentic history it has been overrun, in whole or 
in part, by armies descending through the mountain passes 
of the northwest ; by Herat and Caubul, through the Pesha- 
war pass to the Indus, near Attock ; or by Herat and Can- 
dahar, through the Bolon pass, to a point upon the same 
river about six hundred miles nearer the sea — the invading 
armies always in league, by treaty or conquest, with the 
mountain tribes through which they passed. In 1801 an 
attack by France was feared from the same quarter, through 
an alliance with Persia. To avert the danger the Persian 
Shah was subsidized by the East India Company, and a 
decree obtained by which he excluded all Frenchmen from 
his dominions under pain of death. In the mean time Rus- 
sia was pushing her conquests eastward of the Black Sea, 
and southward along the Persian coasts of the Caspian. 
In 1805 two royal Persian armies were defeated by the 
Russians in two successive battles. Persia was prostrate. 
She applied to the East India Company for' aid, but they 
could lend her none. She applied to Bonaparte, then in 
the zenith of his power, who eagerly espoused her cause — 
despatched an embassy to the Persian Court at Teheran — 
and a numerous staff, with military engineers and artificers 
to discipline troops, to cast cannon, and to strengthen the 
defenses of the Persian cities. A treaty was negotiated, 
ostensibly for the defense of Persia against Russia ; but a 
secret article, it was believed, provided for the invasion of 



20 .EIS-GLAND: HEE PEESEXT CONDITION 

India by a French and Persian army. Early in 1807, be- 
fore any demonstration upon India was made, Napoleon and 
the Emperor Alexander met in person upon a raft on the 
Meman near Tilsit, embraced as brothers, and pledged to 
each other mutual friendship and support. But fears of the 
projected invasion were only thereby increased. The rumor 
was rife that Alexander had agreed to unite in it, and that 
the armies of the three powers, France, Russia, and Persia, 
were to meet in the Persian province of Khorassan, and 
march thence " against the possessions of the company of 
the Indies." But the love of the royal brothers soon waxed 
cold : the pacification of Tilsifc was in effect but a hollow 
truce. India was forgotten, and the attention of the world 
for the eight succeeding years was fixed on the battlefields of 
Europe. After this, much time elapsed without the renewal 
of alarm; but in 1836 Persia sent an army against Herat, 
a fortress on the western borders of Afghanistan, which 
commands the line of march to India ; and the Indian Gov- 
ernment saw in it, or thought they saw, the hand of Russia. 
There was, at this time, a disputed succession to the throne 
of Afghanistan, and one of the aspirants-— the Shah Soojah 
— was expelled, and took refuge in India. The East Indian 
Government sent an agent to the Afghan Court at Caubul 
to make the most of the occasion, but he was met and 
baffled by a Russian diplomatist. Full of alarm, the Gov- 
ernor-General of India determined to send an army against 
Afghanistan, place the expelled pretender on the throne, and 
hold him, as a kind of Mosquito king, dependent on the 
Company. The expedition was at first successful. Dost 
Mahomet, the reigning Khan, was seized, and sent prisoner 
to India ; and Soojah, the British puppet, was placed on the 
throne. But this was soon followed by a general rising of the 
Afghans, who, led on by Akbar Khan, eldest son of the 



A^D FUTUEE PEOSPECTS. 21 

captive monarch, cut off the main body of the Anglo-Indian 
army, and held its scattered detachments cooped up in theii 
frontier fortresses. Another army was raised and sent to 
their relief in the ensuing year (1842), which gained several 
advantages over the Afghans before they had time to collect 
their forces, and succeeded in withdrawing the small remnant 
of the first army and retmng itself in safety to India. But 
the young Afghan chief, Akbar, immediately took possession 
of the abandoned posts ; and Dost Mahomet, his father, re- 
leased at last from his captivity, reascended his throne. 

Though time is precious, I can not forbear to mention 
some incidents of this invasion, which show, in unusual con- 
trast, semi-barbarous and civilized warfare. 

When the Anglo-Indian army was compelled to retreat 
from Caubul, and attempted to make their way through the 
Peshawar pass to Attock, the young Afghan chief undertook 
to protect them from attack, but found it impossible to do 
so. The Government of Afghanistan had been disorganized 
by the dethronement and captivity of his father, and the 
wild tribes that hovered about the mountain passes refused 
to obey him. He made this known to the retreating army, 
warned them of the danger that awaited them, and proposed, 
as the only means to save the lives of the women and chil- 
dren, that they should be surrendered to him as prisoners 
of war- It was done accordingly : not only the women with 
their children, but their husbands also, and he removed them 
aU to a place of safety, and treated them with kindness and 
respect. For this we have the testimony of Lady Sale, one of 
the prisoners, in her narrative published soon after the event. 
The retreat was beyond all example terrible in its result. 
Of the 16,500 Anglo-Indians who fled from Caubul, but one 
solitary man, an army surgeon, reached Jellalabad, the 
nearest British fortress. The rest all perished, except one 



22 ENGLAND: HEE PRESENT CONDITION 

wounded officer, whom the young chief saved from the gen- 
eral massacre by put<"ing a turban en his head and mounting 
him upon his own horse. Next year the tide of victory 
turned. The recruited Anglo-Indian army gamed a battle 
near a fortified village, in which some of the defeated Af- 
ghans took refuge. The historian of the war says : " Our 
troops moved forward, carried the village by storm, and 
slaughtered every man, woman and child within its walls ;" 
and he says it without a word of censure. I have neither 
time nor taste for comment : but leave the young barbarian 
who saved and protected the women and children of the 
invading army, and the British officer who commanded at the 
slaughter of the Afghan women and children in their homes 
and upon their hearths, to your moral appreciation. This 
thing was done in a corner, but it is right that the world 
should know and remember it : for incidents like this con- 
tribute their mite to make up the sum of national character 
And when it is recollected that this attack was wholly un- 
provoked, that it was in its conduct cruel, in its result a 
failure, it may well be coDJectured that it left no strong im- 
pression of either love or fear upon the Afghans or their 
rulers — upon prince or people. 

The policy of the invasion, however, is well understood. 
Danger to India was apprehended from the same quarter 
whence, for two thousand years past, the armies of the 
north and west had so frequently poured down upon and 
wasted it ; and its merchant princes sought to control Af- 
ghanistan, that they might command the passes through 
which alone India is open to invasion by land. They failed, 
and the way is still open, inviting the march of the in- 
vader. 

Great Britain, therefore, now desires to weaken the power 
of Russia on the Black Sea and the Caspian j for it is in 



AND FTJTUEE PEOSPECTS. 23 

that region that she must operate by her own force and 
through intermediate warhke tribes and nations, if she 
would effect the overthrow of the British power in India ; 
and Russia has been strengthening herself greatly in that 
quarter. She maintains a considerable fleet on the Caspian. 
Persia is her dependent. Her railroad from St. Petersburg 
to Moscow is projected to Astracan ; and even now, in the 
beat and fury of the conflict at Sebastopol, she is defeating 
armies and capturing cities on the northeastern border of 
the Turkish Empire. 

A late overland mail from India brings intelligence that 
the Persians have captured Herat, and there is a well- 
founded belief that these persistent movements of Persia 
are instigated by Russia, with a view to an attack on India. 
What has transpired of the pending negotiation for peace 
between England, France, and Russia is, in this point of 
view, of much significance. Louis Napoleon has ministered 
successfully to the strongest passion of the French nation — 
their love of glory. He is a parvenu ; bat" the old legiti- 
mate sovereigns of Europe now not only acknowledge him, 
but pay him deference. He is the head of the Alliance ; 
and Russia, the common enemy, flatters and courts him. 
Having gained all he can hope to gain by the war, he is for 
peace. Great Britain is dissatisfied. She has gathered no 
laurels, and has gained no advantage unless she can restrain 
Russia by treaty from further conquest south and eastward 
of the Caucasus and the Caspian. 

If left without such restraint, it would seem to be in the 
power of Russia to destroy the supremacy of Great Britain 
in India, though not to possess herself permanently of the 
country. Whether it will be her policy to attempt it as a 
diversion in the present war, if the war continue, or to bide 
her time and seize a more favorable moment, remains to be 



24 ENGLAND : HEE PEESEFT CONDITION 

seen. Russia is now strong in her trans-Caucasian provinces. 
Persia is under her control. The Peshawar and the Bolon 
passes are open hy the conquest of Herat ; and the nations 
and tribes through which an invading army roust march, 
and with which its ranks must be filled, have, besides their 
love of plunder, good reason to be hostile to British India. 
An army of fifty thousand Russians and Persians, with the 
Afghans as allies, aided by " the restless Musselmen " of 
the North, would meet little resistance in India. Great 
Britain could not oppose to such a force an army of her 
own ; for the plunder which enticed adventurers to her ranks 
under Clive and Hastings has been already seized; and 
EDglishmen do not arm and go to battle for glory merely, 
even on European fields. 

This, in my opinion, is the first great danger that threatens 
the power of Britain. She is not strong in India. Strong she 
can not be without European troops ; without the good wiU of 
the people or their native princes ; and relying almost solely 
on native troops to fight her battles in maintenance of their 
own subjugation and servitude : and, above all, she has in 
Russia a powerful, jealous, and aggressive neighbor, who- 
borders on the warlike and restless peoples that hold the 
keys to the Indian Empire, and who knows well, what i 5 
indeed obvious to all, that the loss of India would be fatal 
to the maritime and naval supremacy of Great Britain.* 

The commerce of Great Britain, on which her naval 
supremacy depends, is also greatly supported by her supeii- 
ority as a manufacturing nation. She occupies the markets 
of the world '* by reason of the multitude of her wares.'* 
The commerce of India, and that consequent upon her 
manufactures, give her her naval superiority. Without 
them she could not be a great maritime power : for sh@ 

* Note A. 



AXD FUTUEE PEOSPECTS. 25 



does not, any more than her numerous rivals, occupy a com- 
manding position on any great highway of commerce ; she 
does not navigate her ships better or more cheaply than 
they ; and her island affords no large excess of native pro- 
ducts for exportation. 

And whence is her manufacturing supremacy ? She 
does not excel in machinery. In this the United States and 
France rival her ; and they equal, if they do not excel her, 
in invention and improvement. Her mechanics and artisans 
are at least equaled by those of France and Belgium ; she 
does not excel in the perfection of her manufactures ; but in 
cheapness and abundance. In the production of these, the 
first great element has been absolute securit}^ When the 
armies of the French Revolution and of Napoleon were 
devastating kingdoms and unsettling the social and indus- 
trial condition of the contiDent, the British capitalist was 
quietly and securely investing his certificates of public debt, 
and his irredeemable bills of the Bank of England, in manu- 
facturing-buildings and machinery. Great Britain com- 
manded the ocean as now, and traded everywhere except 
with the continent of Europe. Bonaparte began by putting 
down all competition to her spindles, with his continental 
wars and continental system, so they had at last nothing to 
do but to conquer him : and when peace came, Ureat Britain 
had conti'ol of the markets of the world, which she still to a 
great extent retains. She retains them by reason of the 
tendency of trade to flow in its accustomed channels ; and 
she is eDabled to supply them by reason of the vast amount 
of her fixed investments in manufactures, and the abundance 
and cheapness of the fuel with which her machinery is kept 
in motion. 

But in fiiel she has no decisive advantage over her neigh- 
bors of France, Belgium, and Germany, except that she was 



26 E^s^GLAND : HER PRESENT CONDITION 

foremost in bringing her mineral coal into extensive use as 
a manufacturing power. Her engineers and miners were 
busily engaged, following the coal-seams in the depths of the 
earth, while the surface of continental Europe was overrun 
and desolated by hostile armies. But the center and the 
north of France, the southern part of Belgium, and various 
parts of Germany have their coal-fields of large extent, 
though perhaps of inferior quality, which will yield abund- 
antly for manufacturing purposes long after the richest and 
most accessible mines of England shall have been exhausted- 

The coal fields of the Tyne and the Wear, which supply 
London, were surveyed some thirty years ago ; and the en- 
gineer, Mr. Bayley, expressed the opinion that the coal in 
that part of the Kingdom on which her best manufactttres 
depend, would, at its then present rate of consumption, be 
exhausted in a little more than two hundred years. About 
thirty of those years have passed away, and the annual 
consumption of coal has more than doubled within that 
time. 

Mr. Bakewell, in his introduction to Geology, after speak- 
ing of this survey, and considering the principal deposits of 
coal on the Island, except the south of Wales, says : " If 
we look to Whitehaven, Lancashire, or to any of the minor 
coal fields in the West of England, we can derive little hope 
of their being able to supply London and the southern 
counties, after the import of coal fails from Northumberland 
and Durham. We may thus anticipate a period not very 
remote, when all the English mines of coal and ironstone 
will be exhausted; and were we disposed to indulge in 
gloomy forebodings, we might draw a melancholy picture of 
our starving and declining population, and describe some 
manufacturing patriarch, traveling to see the last expiring 
English furnace, before he emigrated to distant regions." 



AND FUTURE PROSPECTS. 27 

He finds, however, the supply of coal of an inferior quality 
large in South Wales ; and it is not at all probable that the 
Island will, within the next two thousand years, actually want 
fuel for the ordinary purposes of life. But the excellent and 
abundant and convenient supply, on which her manufacturing 
supremacy depends, will fail within the short period named 
by Mr. Bayley. The great coal field on the Tyne and Wear, 
which supplies the eastern coast of England, including the 
city of London, has an area of about seven hundred square 
miles, of which more than one-third has been exhausted. 
We may form some conception of this by a comparison at 
home. The coal field southeast of this city, the western out- 
crop of which supplies your market, extends over an area 
of 80,000 square miles — quite one hundred times the extent 
of that in the north of England, of which it is a kindred 
formation. Hence, if that coal field will supply the eastern 
part of England, including London, one hundred, this will 
supply a like consumption for ten thousand years. We 
therefore may venture to use the products of our mines 
boldly, nor fear that in so doing we waste the resources 
which belong to our posterity. 

Such, however, is not the case in Great Britain. Economy 
in the use of fuel is due to the future necessities of that 
people. The supply of coal in the least plentiful mining 
districts must, by and by, even within the age of men now 
living, begin to fail and become deficient ; and the fires de- 
pendent upon it must be one by one extinguished — and far 
within the two hundred years named by Mr. Bayley, the 
sound of the trip-hammer and the rolling-mill, and the burr- 
ing of spindles, will cease in the north and west of England, 
and that populous region will again become a rural instead 
of a manufacturing district. In this changed condition of 
things, the great cities will receive their supply of fuel from 



28 ElS^GLAND: HER PRESENT CONDITIOI^ 

the south of Wales, and the most profitable manufactures 
will be transferred there : but rivals in France, in Belg:ium, 
and especially in the United States, where the supply of 
excellent fuel is abundant and easy of access, will have 
already conquered the ascendancy of Great Britain as the 
manufacturers for the world. 

Connected with this, and partly dependent upon it, another 
evil menaces the prosperity of Great Britain. The interest 
on the public debt, if paid, must press constantly on pro- 
ductive industry, lessening always the returns of capital, 
however invested ; and, as it increases in amount, it must 
continue to bear more and more heavily upon production, 
until manufacturing capital will cease to yield a Return equal 
to the amount of taxation. This condition of things will 
disclose itself first in the least profitable manufactures, those 
which meet the most brisk competition in the markets of 
the world, and will gradually extend to all those branches 
in which Great Britain has no local advantage over her 
neighboring competitors. • It is a burden most difficult to 
remove ; and it thus threatens in some season of adversity 
to crush that industry which in better times it tended to exalt. 

But perhaps it may assume another form. Perhaps 
some political necessity, some great reverse, lessening for 
a series of years the productive results of industry or of 
commerce, may compel repudiation in whole or in part of 
this pubMc debt. The Government, with its navy and army, 
must first be suppoited, for it is essential to national exist- 
ence. The interest upon the pubhc debt follows next in the 
order of exigency and obligation. Now, if we reckon back 
in periods of fifty years to the close of the seventeenth 
century, we will find no one of those periods in which the 
Government has been supported, and the interest on the 
public debt paid, without resort to loans. The revenues 



AND FUTURE PEOSPECTS. 29 



have been insufficient, and they must be so always. The 
debt is too far in advance of them — they can never over- 
take it. 

Now, for the better understanding of the character and 
value of this public debt, let us embody the creditors and 
give them unity. We comprehend the debtor as one: let 
us, in imagination, consider the creditor as one also. Then 
all these great transactions of borrowing and lending, and 
paying and receiving interest, will pass between two persons, 
and we can understand them. This pubHc creditor has 
four thousand millions of dollars of the public securities in 
his vaults, on which accrues every year one hundred and 
forty millions of dollars of interest. But the revenues will 
not pay this interest, except in seasons of peace and of com- 
mercial prosperity. How, then, is it paid, for paid it is 
most punctually ? By this cheap and simple process. The 
creditor lends to the Government on each adverse year one 
hundred and forty millions of dollars, which is handed back 
to him in payment of his interest, and with it a hke amount 
of new certificates. So it has been, with some exceptions, 
for one hundred and sixty years past ; and, during much 
of all that time, if the creditor had failed to lend money to 
pay himself, he could not have been paid. Now how peril- 
ous is the property in these securities. The multitudes 
who hold them, and who, by investments in them, make 
the loans which go to pay the interest, do not see the whole 
operation. It is not before them as it would be before a single 
individual ; and they have been in the habit of seeing the 
interest paid, and hearing their fathers and grandfathers 
say that it was always paid, and they habitually think it 
always will be — without knowing or remembering that the 
pubHc creditors, as a body, (those who are creditors and 
those who become such,) pay themselves the interest which 



30 ENGLAIN"© : HEE PEESENT CONDITION" 

tliey receive. But wlien any one of those calamities which 
visit nations, and which threaten her, shall come upon Great 
Britain when she shall lose Hindostan, which sooner or later 
is inevitable, and with it the annual wealth which she draws 
from its soil, its industry and its commerce — when her 
manufacturing supremacy shall be shaken by domestic 
revolution, or sink, by the gradual operation of causes already 
indicated, prominent among which is the debt itself, even 
now pressing, an almost crushing burden upon manufacturing 
labor, she will be no longer able to draw from her industry 
an annual fund to pay the interest upon her debt — her 
credit will be destroyed so that she can no longer be a bor- 
rower — she will be at once a bankrupt — her public securities 
utterly worthless' — and her creditors, those Avhose subsistence 
is the public debt, reduced to want, and the nation whose 
strength is her riches will be rendered comparatively 
feeble.* 

I have thus hastily summed up the causes which, in my 
opinion, threaten to subvert the proud rank of Great Britain 
among the nations of the earth. Their effects are not yet 
—they wait the coming on of time ; but men now living 
will probably witness the visible operation of some of them — 
the beginning of the end. And what is to be that end ? 
I answer, a large reduction ia the population, and especially 
in the wealth of the Island — the loss of her possessions 
abroad, her colonies, her dependencies — the loss also of 
much of her manufactures, and much more of her com- 
merce, bhe will cease to be the mart of wealth, and her naval 
power will sink to a condition little above that of her present 
power on land; and younger nations will grow up and 
overshadow her. 

The history of Spain from the beginning of the sixteenth 

* See Note B. 



AT^D FUTUEE PEOSPECTS. 31 

century down to the present time does, I think, in many 
particulars, prefigure the probable history of Great Britain 
for a like period to come. I'hey differ, however, in this : 
Great Britain has a naval superiority which Spain never as 
fully possessed ; and she has not, and therefore can not lose, 
the high military rank which Spain had and has lost. Like 
Spain, she is separated from the rest of the world by strong 
natural barriers ; and therefore not in position to hold per- 
manent dominion over other nations, or to be successfully 
assailed on her own soil. And the high spirit and valor of 
both nations alike forbid that they should be permanently 
ruled by others. Thus far do I think Great Britain liable 
to fall. But the form of her Government, her civilization, 
her learning, her arts, are not likely to be destroyed or 
greatly impaired by the loss of a portion of her external 
power. When she ceases to be mistress of the ocean, her 
soil, like that of other nations, may be subject to invasion ; 
but hers is not a people that will suffer it to be overrun and 
conquered. 

I am aware that when dwelling in thought on the des- 
tinies of nations, and the vicissitudes to which they are 
subject in long periods of time, we turn instinctively to the 
empires, and the cities which were the seats of empires, in 
remote antiquity, known to us through Bible history— as 
Assyria, Babylon, Nineveh, all which have perished utterly 
■ — and thus, mingling memories of the past with our antici- 
pations of the future, we fancy that the fate of western 
nations and cities must be one day like theirs. In this 
mood of mind a favorite author, Macauley, in one of his 
essays, imagines a time in the distant future " when some 
traveler from New Zealand shall, in the midst of a vast soli- 
tude, take his stand on a broken arch of London bridge, to 
sketch the ruins of St. Paul's." 



32 ENGLAND: HEE PEESENT CONDITION 



There is poetry in the thought, but not philosophic prob- 
ability, no matter how deep in the distant future the vision 
be cast. Analogy fails. Those mighty empires which have 
passed away and Irft behind them but a name ; their great 
cities, now mounds of earth, whose buried treasures and 
more deeply buried letters a Botta and a Layard are begin- 
ning to disentomb, and a Rawhnson and Hincks to interpret, 
stood upon the borders of wide-spread deserts held by wan 
dering Ishmaelites — pirates of the earth, the sons of plunder 
and rapine. We find them there in almost the earliest mo- 
ments of recorded time, and stiU they are there. Three 
thousand years ago they wasted the land of Israel as far as 
Gaza, when Gideon threshed his father's wheat at the wine- 
press to hide it from them ; and at this day they carry ojBf 
the harvests from the fields even under the walls of Damas- 
cus. An empire on their borders, whUe it was vigorous and 
powerful, held them in check, but could not tame or con- 
quer them. But when adversity came upon it — when its 
power was broken and it tottered to its fall — they poured 
their locust swarms over it and destroyed it utterly. The 
disheartened husbandman who had fled from his fields would 
not return to sow them ; for, even if suffered to reap, his 
harvest was borne off in sheaves on camels' backs to the 
desert, and he could not garner it. So the land became a 
wilderness, and the cities became heaps of ruins. 

But such has never been the fate of Western nations, 
and, judging by the past, can not be, unless the economy of 
Providence in the government of the world shall change to 
suffer it. Nations, it is true, rise and fall; countries are 
overrun and for a time laid waste ; but war is waged for 
conquest and dominion, not plunder merely, and the con- 
queror is careful not to destroy that which he intends to 
possess. The season of violence, therefore, passes by. The 



AND FUTURE PEOSPECTS. 33 

huslbandman returns to his fields and sows and reaps, and 
finds, under whatsoever power he may fall, at least that im- 
perfect protection which secures him a subsistence out of 
the products of his labor and of the soil. Hence Western 
countries, when once peopled, have never been utterly de- 
serted ; civilization never, even for a time, entirely obhter- 
ated ; and amid the revolutions which overturn states and 
empires, "the abomination of desolation" has never passed, 
and does not seem destined to pass, over Western lands. 



NOTES TO EDITION OF 1866. 



Note A, to page 24. 
The predicted troubles in Hindostan have first appeared in the form of a do- 
mestic revolt, which was sudden and premature, unsupported by any Euro- 
pean power; and it was put down, after a desperate struggle, by the aid ofthe 
Sikhs and the mountain tribes of Nepaul and Rootan, who were lured to the 
service by the love of plunder and by British gold. But the end is not yet* 
this is but an incident, an episode in the great onward course of human 
events. It has, however, taught these warlike tribes how easy it were to 
conquer and plunder Hindostan for themselves, especially with the aid of a 
European ally skilled in the arts of war. 

Note B, to page 30. 
We consider the condition of foreign nations with less bias, and therefore 
predict their future with more precision, than our own. The above lecture 
was delivered a little more than ten years ago. I did not then foi-esee the 
terrible civil war through which our country has since passed, and the im- 
mense debt with which it has burdened us, while I distinctly saw and fore- 
told some of the calamities which impend over Great Britain, and which 
have now become a subject of recognition in Parliament. I give below 
large extracts from a speech delivered by the Lord Chancellor, Mr. Gladstone, 
on the 2d day of May last, in which their failure in the supply of coal, the 
consequent failure of their manufactures, and the crushing weight with 
which the public debt must consequently fall on the real estate and the fixed 
capital of the country, are fully recognized and forcibly stated. Having 
presented the budget for the curi-ent year, and spoken of the strong ten- 
dency of nations within the past few years to contract debts in time of peace, 
he speaks of the debt of the United States, estimated it pretty nearly, and 
the very large interest we are paying on it, and goes on to say : 

"Now, looking at these figures, a man would be struck with something 
like despair; but if we look at (he position of the country which has to bear the 
burden, I must con/ess that I think the future of America, as far as finance is con- 

35 



36 NOTES. 



cerned — political problems are not now in question — will not be attended with any 
embarrassment. I do not believe thai that debt luill constitute any difficulty for the 
American people. (Cheers.) I am confident that if they show, with respect 
to finance, any portion of that extraordinary resolution which, on both sides 
alike, they manifested during the war, and of that equally remarkable reso- 
lution with which, on the return of peace, they have brought their monstrous 
and gigantic establishments within moderate bounds-(hear ! hear 1)-I won't 
say that this debt, according to an expression which was once fashionable 
in this country, will be a flea-bite — (a laugh) — but that, in a moderate time, 
it will be brought within very small limits, and may, even within the life- 
time of persons now living, be eifaced altogether." 

And having estimated the debts of the several nations of Europe — France 
at £4U0, 000,000; Austria at £316,000,000; Eussia, £279,000,000; Italy, £152,- 
000,000; Spain, £145,000,000; Holland, £85,000,000; Turkey, £54,000,000; 
Prussia;, £43,000,000; and Portugal £38,000,000, he goes on to say of the 
British debt: 

"On the 81st of March, 1857, the national debt had risen to £831,722,000 
on the 31st of March, 1859, it was £823,934,000; and on the 31st of March, 18G6, 
it was £798,900,000. (Cheers.) That is nominally apointsomewhat lower than 
it had stood at before ; but it must be remembered that we have cancelled two 
minor sinking, fund stocks which formerly formed part of the nominal capital, 
so that, in fact, we may say, with substantial accuracy, for it is not necessary 
to be particular to a million or a million and a half, it has jupt now reached 
the point at which we have effaced the results of the Crimean loar, and the debt 
thus stands at the very place which it occupied at the commencement of the year 
1854. It is not necessary to observe that there are several sums not very 
material in themselves. We are indebted to the savings banks in the sum 
of about £3,000,000, and, on the other hand, we have moneys len ton perfectly 
good security on bonds to Drainage Commissioners and other bodies that 
amount to about £10,000,000 ; but that is not an amount that we need take 
into view in dealing with this enormous accumulation of the national obli- 
gations. £799,000,000 then, is, in round numbers, the present capital debt. 
(Hear.) Now let us observe the rates at which we have operated upon the 
debt. From 1815 to 1854, there were nearly forty years of the most pro- 
found peace ever known, and that, therefore, was the very period in which 
it was most desirable for us to deal efficiently with this debt, if we were to 
place ourselves in a position to look at war, as a necessity, in the face again. 
Well, sir, I have stated what was then done. The rate of decrease per an- 
num at that period was £2,609,000 — undoubtedly a very trivial sum when 
we consider the enormous amount of what has to be achieved. In the three 
years and a quarter from the 5th of January, 1854, to the 81st of March, 
1857, the rate of increase was nearly £10,000,000 per annum ; in exact fig- 
ures, £9,602,000. From 1857 to 1866 the total rate of decrease has been some, 
what better, but still far below what it ought to have been, viz.: £3,646,000, 



NOTES. 37 



(Hear, hear.) Now, I wish to call the attention of the committee to this :^ 
that what we must expect is, that whereas two or three millions a year have 
represented the average of our operations in time of peace — I do not believe, 
if we take the whole years of peace since 1815, that the average operation 
would reach three millions — if ever you become involved in any great and pro- 
tracted war, you must expect, not immediately, but after a year or two of 
war, to see the debt grow at about ten times the rate at which you reduce it 
in time of peace. (Hear.) Now, sir, the next question I come to consider 
is whether that is a satisfactory state of things for the country. 

"1 must ask you to bear with me while I endeavor to point out what I take 
to be the true state of our own case. I address myself to the whole com-? 
mittee, and especially to gentlemen opposite, and those who say, and say 
truly, that they are deeply interested in the landed and fixed property in the 
country; because I apprehended that if there be any special interest con- 
cerned in the subject I am about to consider, it is the interest of the landed 
property. In the first place, then, let it be remembered that ive are living in 
a coimnercial era, the prospects of which it is almost impossible to appreciate, from 
their magnitude. Every five years the rate of increase is continually shifting, 
and always shifting upwards. The liberation of industry, the progress of inven- 
tion, the steady investigation of science, the improvement of social habits, are all com- 
bining together to induce the conclusion that in the days of our childhood, when we 
thought the commerce of England was a wonderful thing, and that the commerce 
of the world was wonderful; and when we had an idea that a centur_y's de- 
velopment had brought about almost a mountain of transformation, the result 
was, in point of fact, nothing but an infant in the cradle. But it was an 
infant Hercules, that has ever since been bursting its bonds; and, depend 
upon it, great as is the extension to which it has now reached, in all likeli- 
hood it will go on extending still more in the future. We are not prophets 
here, but it is our duty, although we must refrain from dogmatizing, to esti- 
mate probabilities as well as we can, and, like wise men, permit ourselves 
to be guided by the balance of probability. During the next twenty or 
thirty years, then, or perhaps more, for I can not pretend to name a time, we 
are to look for a still further development and extension of the commerce of 
this country, which is now in the aggi'egate, I apprehend, at least three-fold 
what it was five and twenty years ago. Well, the population has been in- 
creasing at a less rate than five and twenty per cent., while our commerce 
has been multiplied three times; and this, we must fairly presume, will go 
on. Now, the great agents of production are three : first, we have land and. 
fixed capiital; secondly, we have movable or transferable capital; and thirdly, we 
have labor. Let us consider, for it is most important, the relative position of 
these three agents. A race is going on between nations in industry and 
enterprise, and no doubt can exist as to what nation is at this moment fore- 
most in the race. The people of the United Kingdom are by far the fore- 
most. Their external commerce is, I apprehend, as great as that of the two 
countries which come next in order to it; the United Kingdom, with its thirty 
millions of people, is as great in commerce as France and America, with their seventy 



38 NOTES. 



millions of people. That is an extraordinary fact. We liave^ undouUedly got 
the start in the race; and it behooves us to inquire what has given it to us. Doubt- 
less we have great advantages; our geographical position is a great advant- 
age ; so also is the character of the people. But both our geographical posi- 
tion and the character of onr people are the same as they vs^ere a century 
ago; and England then did not lead the trade of Europe. What, then, has 
given us the lead? Of course there is an increasing cause in our accumu- 
lative capital; but the chief cause is the possession of our mineral treasures. 
(Hear, hear.) The fact, not merely of the possession of coal, but the i)os- 
session of vast stores of coal under such circumstances that we can raise 
it to the surface at a lower price than any other country in the world. It 
is not the quantity of coal, but its production at a low price, which has given us 
the start, and has caused the enormously rapid progress of the country, 
which from many other points of view might have been expected to make 
less rapid progress than it has; because, after all, the very great treasure 
of nations — namely, their unoccupied lands — is a treasure which we possess, 
in our three kingdoms, in a much smaller degree than almost every other 
European countr3^ It is, then, our possession of coal near what depends upon coal 
that has given us this extraordinary pre-eminence in commerce and industry. W.ell, 
it has often been a subject of very interesting discussion as to whether we 
may look upon our stores of coal as being practically inexhaustible; and in 
the condition in which our commerce was twenty or thirty years ago, it 
would have been perfectly reasonable to answer that question in the aflSrma- 
tive and assume that our coal was inexhaustible. But circumstances have 
greatly changed the rate of increase in our production and consumption of 
coal; indeed, the consumption has become such that the minds of the great- 
est among our scientific authorities have been turned to the question, and 
the inquiry has been raised as to what will be the influence upon our supply 
if our consumption continue to increase ; and I venture to express the opin- 
ion that it probably will continue. But for the present argument I ask you 
to consider this: Assuming, for the moment, that we shall not be able to con- 
tinue for many generations to produce coal at prices cheaper than other 
countries, what will happen ? It is not enough to say that the expenses in- 
curred in maintaining ventilation, keeping down the temperature, and such 
matters, will be economized by new inventions and contrivances. Those 
new inventions and contrivances there may be; but they won't give us a 
pre-eminence over other countries, because other countries will be able to 
make use of them as well as ourselves. (Hear, hear.) In the same way 
there is no use in saying that a substitute will be found for coal. No doubt 
there are men of high authority who ihink that such a substitute will be 
found, though the matter is one on which there is a difference of opinion. 
But supposing that a substitute will be found, it will not be peculiar to Eng- 
land. 1 think it is clear that at whatever time-whether fifty, or one hundred, 
or any other number of years lience — we may cease to be able to raise coal at a 
lower price than other countries, our relative position towards other nations 
must be lost; but of the question of coal against coal, there can be no doubt 



NOTES. 39 

as to how the case stands. There is another country, not only as rich in mineral 
wealth as ourselves, but with a coal surface thirty-seven times greater than the coal 
surface of this country — I allude to the United States of America; and though most 
of the coal there contains so large an amount of anthracite that it is not fit 
for steam or for smelting purposes, to domestic purposes it is capable of 
being adapted* Suppose, then, that pre-eminence in the cheap production 
of coal should be carried from us away across the Atlantic, what will hap- 
pen? There will be a decline of rents, a decline of profits, a decline ofuages. There 
will be precisely the reverse of what we have all seen taking place within 
our time— an increase of rents, an increase of profits, an increase of wages. 
And when rents, profits, and wages decline, what will the owners do ? Those 
who receive wages, finding that wages are lower here than across the Atlantic, will 
migrate; and the holders of movable property, finding that there is a wider and more 
profitable field for their capital elsewhere, luill send their capital abroad. What will 
the owners of rents do? It appears to me that they cannot migrate. Per- 
sonally they may do so, but that from which they derive their income can 
not migrate. The upshot will be that the charge of the national debt, which 
is now borne in full on property, profits and rents, will remain as a perma- 
nent mortgage on the lands, houses, and works of the country. I wish I 
could convey to the House the impression which the consideration of this 
subject makes on my own mind, and I trust I take no unworthy view of it. 
I go upon the results arrived at by able and skillful statisticians who, under 
the authority of the Government, have made inquiries into the matter. Mr- 
Hulme estimates the quantity of coal in the United Kingdom within 4,000 
feet of the surface at 83,000 million tons. He states that in 1854 the con- 
sumption was 64 millions ; in 1861 it was 86 millions. Based on these num- 
bers, the computed annual rate of growth in the consumption is 3.7 per cent. 
Now, not taking it at so much as 3-7, but taking it at 3-5 per cent., this 
would give the annual consumption in 1961 as 2,607 millions of tons; and 
by 1970, 104 years from this time, the consumption will have reached 130,- 
000 million tons, or a greater quantity than all the coal now known to be 
available in Great Britain within 4,000 feet of the surface. I believe that 
long before we reach that consumption the causes will be found in operation 
from which an increase in price will follow. Mr. Jevons, whose statistics 
my honoi-able friend the member for Westminster has quoted, has gone very 
fully and carefully into the facts, and he holds a similar opinion in respect 
of our coal supply to that which I have just stated. Honorable members 
remember the statement made two years a,go by Sir William Armstrong. Sir 
John Herschel agreed with Mr. Jevons, as I believe does Dr. Percy also. I 
myself have had an opportunity of communicating with my distinguished 
friend Sir Roderick Murchison on the subject. He, for years, has believed 
the matter to be one of the very gravest order, and one demanding our most 
earnest consideration. (Hear, hear.) In vain would it be to think of stop- 
ping the consumption of coal in this country : in vain would it be to think 
of diminishing that consumption by the imposition of tax, and it would be 



*NorE.— In this the ChaDcellor is mistaken— a very small proportion of the Coal in the TJ. 
S. is anthracite, and a very large proportion of it is well adapted to the production of steam. 



40 NOTES. 

more Tain still to think of prohibiting its exportation. [An honorable 
member expressed dissent.] I am only giving my own opinion ; I shall not 
enter into that matter now — (hear, hear) — I merely wish to remark that, 
even could we limit the consumption of coal, I think it is perfectly obvious 
that we cannot continue to supply coal in unlimited quantities at the present 
low prices for an unlimited time — or say, for one or two centuries. In the 
face of such*a state of things in the future, we ought to make preparations 
for it, and the way to do that is by using moderate and reasonable efforts to 
rid ourselves of our encumbrances. (Hear, hear.) As those who are to come 
after us may have to encounter difficulties of which we have no practical 
knowledge, we ought not to hand down to them, in their worst form, difficul- 
ties which it is in our power to alleviate. * *' * I hope that I have not 
been unwittingly led to prophesy, or to do any thing more than to give such 
sketches of the future as will appear probable, and present a fair and rea- 
sonable claim upon the attention of prudent men. Regarding the statements 
I have made I would not say more than this : The facts which I have laid 
before the House are grave facts, urgent, indeed, within certain limits. Al- 
though, perhaps, the proper business on these occasions is to announce the 
financial proposals for the year, it did seem right to us, actuated as we be- 
lieved by grave and reasonable causes, to cast our glances into futurity and 
endeavor in some degree to meet those demands which might justly be made 
upon us, so that when we cease to apply ourselves to our arduous tasks — and 
when I say 'we,' I do not mean the Government, but honorable members who 
now constitute this House — when we have passed away from active life, those 
■who come after us may have reason to confess that in the provisions made 
for our own sons we have taken some thought of them, and that our conduct 
has not been such as to excite their regret or condemnation. (Cheers.)" 



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